


revenge, and fight, and live

by openmouthwideeye



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 16:20:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openmouthwideeye/pseuds/openmouthwideeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Brienne had championed her lion to freedom, but shelter was less easily won.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	revenge, and fight, and live

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for this being awful. My muses are being finicky again and this is more to grease my mental cogs than anything. Which probably didn't happen, so double fail. But, whatever, it's just sitting here so I thought I'd contribute to limiting the hiatus lull. Unbeta'd, so it's no one's fault but my own.

Their daughter was born in a wooded glen just beyond the sight of Dondarrion soldiers. The air was crisp—early spring that merely hinted at the warmth that would creep from Dorne in the years to come. Jaime had thought to find work at Blackhaven, but that blasted Ned Dayne had named him Kingslayer, and the watch would not have him amongst their numbers. An unlanded, one-handed knight of ill repute was not worth the trouble of his bread.

Nowhere was he recognized that Ser Jaime Lannister met with aught but fear and contempt. He had come to value the scorn; ravens trailed the fear, and his wife moved with a cumbersome determination that did not lend itself to flight.

Brienne had stopped treating with commanders nearly a fortnight past. Her considerable skill oft earned laughter instead of coin; few would accept her into their ranks even before she was heavy with child.

Now the child was light in his arms, as meager of frame as the sparse vegetation. _And as like wither._ She was lighter than an infant ought to be: smaller than Joffrey or Tommen or even Myrcella had been.

 _Her mother could pull an oxcart without feeling winded._ _She should not be so slight._

But his wife was winded now. She reached for the babe with a feeble strength that surprised him, even after watching her withstand the cruelties of winter and war. He laid his daughter at her breast, both slick with blood and fluid, as though the rushing of his pulse had leaked upon his daughter’s untainted flesh, marking her his. Brienne held the squalling babe as Jaime cleaned her clumsily with his left hand. Her arms shook, supporting her daughter because she would not accept otherwise.

“We cannot risk the Stormlands.”

Jaime paused his third attempt to swaddle the babe, staring warily at the woman who had so adamantly insisted they turn their horses north.

“The Imp’s eyes extend beyond the Wendwater.”

Jaime nodded as though he did not know her true reasons for abandoning Bronzegate. The ravaging of Tarth had extended beyond Shipbreaker Bay, and home beckoned less strongly without her losses ripping anew with each pang of childbirth.

“We can make our way to White Harbor,” he suggested, his stump anchoring their daughter in his wife’s arms. “The Northmen regard the Starks well enough that we might find labor there.” He would not risk the kingsroad otherwise.

Brienne shook her head, tired jerks that ripped her hair across the tough green blades jutting from the half frozen earth. He carefully untangled the strands from the brush, smoothing them away from her dirt-streaked brow.

“The snows are too heavy. She will not survive the spring there.” Her fatigued muscles twitched the babe closer, and he frowned as he shifted his daughter higher in her mother’s arms. “We could find harbor in Oldtown.”

Jaime snorted. He was close enough that his breath teased his daughter’s damp, mud-gold down. “To guard those bloody maesters who cower amongst parchments while the world turns to ash and ice around them?” He shook his head shortly. “If the girl would not survive White Harbor, we cannot risk the journey to Oldtown.”

“Dragons still patrol the Westerlands.” As though he did not remember. Had not seen his sister burned as his brother’s command.

_A cleaner death than some._

Brienne had championed her lion to freedom, but shelter was less easily won.

A hitch arose from the squirming mess of slime-streaked wool. His daughter fought feebly against her constraints, and the blankets parted like flesh baring a wound. Her mouth pursed soundlessly, as if she did not know how to approach the vast world she had exposed.

The night echoed with thin cries that pierced him swiftly and startlingly. Jaime fumbled the blanket as he tucked it tight, tugging with fingers and teeth as his stump supported her rump against Brienne’s tattered jerkin. His daughter hiccupped and fell to whimpers.

His wife’s fingers trailed his jaw as he pulled away, so he eased back into her touch, nosing along the fragile outline of their daughter like a hog rooting through the underbrush. “The Upper Reach, then?” he murmured into the blanket, caring but little how great a fool he must look. Peace was fleeting; even so unsteady a peace as this.

“Nearer Highgarden,” she agreed slowly, hand weaving loosely through his beard. Her head lolled upon the saddlebag that had borne her weight through her long, arduous labor. “The Queen of Thorns might show mercy where the Dragons will not.”

_It amuses the old woman to prick beasts with flowered thorns and sprinkle flames with rosewater._

He nodded, but he could not have said that his wife understood. Her short, pale lashes were fluttering over eyes more Tully blue than Tarth in the faint light of dawn.

 _Family, Duty, Honor._ Those bloody words would dog her all her days.

“Lazy wench.” His breath teased her arms, bolstering them with his own beneath the sleeping babe. Her brow twitched as if to furrow, but her muscles were already slacking with sleep.

The sun had been bright when the pains had struck her; now the moon sunk beneath the grey predawn. The coming days would offer no rest.

He eased the child from her breast, tugging her tunic high beneath her jerkin to offer some sparse protection from the early spring winds. He dared not open the saddlebag for thicker garb with their daughter unsteady in the crook of his stump.

In the receding light of the cloud-scattered stars, even the babe looked worn: in the world but half a night, and already weary. Thin blue veins spidered beneath her fragile skin, and a faint pallor leeched the blooms of red from her cheeks.

 _The Dragons hoard their flames_ , Jaime thought bitterly, turning his shoulder against the insatiable wind licking over trees and rocks and brush, trying their meager defenses. _And my daughter suffers the lingering throes of winter with a hedge as her guard._

He remembered the early days of winter, when the Wildlings had spilled into the Crownlands herding children and livestock, babes clutched beneath the women’s ratted furs. Brienne had remained sullenly silent for days, eyes tracing their slow progress south.

“To lack such hope,” she had whispered at last, reticence stolen by the fear blanketing the land in a mute facsimile of peace. “To leave your child nameless, forsaken to war and exposure.” Her voice had cracked, melting into the flames of their dying fire.

But that was before they had pilfered fragments of her childhood by moonlight, hearts catching at every sound that crashed upon the shore. Before they had wed at a flame-kissed altar in the husk of a burned sept, two errant knights bound by a septon more beggar than holy brother. Before their purpose had been prised from them and scattered in Targaryen flames.

The near-warmth of dawn suffused the rough hills of the Stormlands with a glow of gold and rose. If not for the frail child in his maimed embrace, his bruised wife snug against his thigh, Jaime might have imagined the wars had never come. Daybreak scrubbed the land pink and clean and spotted brown, like a certain shy maid in the hot baths of Harrenhal.

Jaime studied his daughter as dawn dissipated into grey morning, falling foolishly in love with the sight of breath stirring her cheek.

Brienne came awake before midday. Her freckled fingers trembled as she raised a hand to feel their daughter’s breath, warm and shallow on her fingertips. Jaime could still feel its dampness when Brienne brought her hand to his face. He coaxed his eyes upward, watching blue pools sink and swirl and spill upon her cheeks as she clung to his rapture with tired eyes.

Her gaze fell upon their daughter, seeking her own assurances. 

“I was not made to be a mother.” Fresh tears leaked from his wife’s eyes, but she seemed not to notice them. “I told Lady Catelyn that once, when the world was still summer.”

Jaime’s jaw clenched angrily, though at her or the gods or her dead Lady Stark he did not know.

“You will give our daughter a name,” he growled. Her hand moved almost unconsciously to the blanket, rising and falling with the slow, measured breathing of the delicate being she had given life. The blood in his stump raced beneath his wife’s wrist, merging his pulse with hers through their skin. “A bloody fool name pulled from some verse or tale or chronicle. And she will rue it as she learns swordplay and sewing and all the bloody graces two roaming hedge knights can give her.”

_And the realm will rue it when the lions of Lannister roar once more._

Through the sweat and tears that had leaked down her chin, spilling unheeded onto her bloodstained jerkin, Brienne locked away her fear and exhaustion beneath the iron resolve that her husband knew so well.

“Yes,” she said, fingers tightening fiercely on her fledgling family. “Our daughter will _live_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback is always welcome.


End file.
